Double retirement for Toro Rosso
After being in seventh heaven yesterday with Jaime Alguersuari and Sebastian Buemi's qualifying results, the Scuderia Toro Rosso suffered a huge disppointment this afternoon at Francorchamps as both drivers were forced to retire the race.
Sebasitan Buemi
Retired
“I got a great start, moving up from eleventh on the grid to sixth after the first corner, which was fantastic. I was able to follow the pace of Alonso and Hamilton. Then Perez tried to pass me and simply drove into the back of me, which completed destroyed my rear wing and I had no option but to bring the car back to the pits to retire. I really can’t understand what he was doing, as I was clearly ahead of him: it was as though he forgot to brake. Next, we come to the team’s home race in Monza and, as our car seems to have made progress in performance terms, let’s see what we can do there.”
Jaime Alguersuari
Retired
“I don’t want to speak badly about any other driver as it’s not my style, but I think the situation was quite clear to everyone. Going into the hairpin after the start, I was in the middle with Senna on my inside and Fernando on my outside and Senna completely missed his braking point and hit me which pushed me into the path of the Ferrari. However, there are many positive things we can take out of this weekend, as we clearly had a car capable of scoring many points today, which is a tribute to all the hard work of the team. I feel sorry for the guys, because starting sixth on the grid is not an everyday occurrence for us. Now I am looking forward to the next race in Monza, as I see no reason why we cannot be competitive there and score more points.”
Franz Tost: “Both our drivers had very short races, before being knocked out in incidents that were not their fault, a view supported by the race officials, who penalised Senna and Perez for the collisions with Jaime and Sebastien respectively. Of course, this is very disappointing given our strong showing in qualifying, which meant we were hoping to score a good number of points today. However, on the positive side, both our drivers performed very well throughout the weekend and all the updates introduced on the STR6 appear to have delivered an increase in performance. Given all the hard work completed over the past few weeks prior to the break, in the factory at Faenza and the wind tunnel in Bicester, I think everyone at Scuderia Toro Rosso deserved a better reward than to see both cars go out of the race so early. However, our pace here was encouraging and means we can look forward to trying again in two weeks time, for what is our home race at Monza.”
